Peace Corps

Tonga

Comeback

From Penny Hodgkinson in Nukualofa American contacts with Tonga began informally around 1840 with merchant navy visits and occasional ship-jumping by sailors unable to resist the ‘Pa cific Paradise’ lure.

After them came the traders, most notably P. S. Bloomfield, who became the first US consul and founded a family whose descendents still play a leading role in Tonga’s political, government and business circles today.

During World War 11, around 30 000 US troops were stationed in the kingdom, averaging up to 12 000 at any one time. They brought with them an unprecedented, if tem porary, prosperity, and left behind an improved infrastruc ture and a significant number of small human mementos fathered by white and black US servicemen.

On a smaller but still highly significant scale, a thousand ‘grassroots ambassadors’ of the American Peace Corps have been building goodwill for their country since 1967, by working and living beside the Tongan people and seeking

through their widely assorted

skills to improve the quality of life at the lower end of the economic scale.

The 70 volunteers at present in Tonga include teachers, technicians, engineers, archi tects, co-op advisers and trainers, a doctor, a physio therapist, a hospital dietitian, a handicrafts adviser, a practical expert in fisheries development and agricultural advisers.

The next intake due shortly will be heavily oriented towards health services.

PC volunteers come in all age groups from the 20s upwards. One of the best and most fondly remembered was a gifted kindergarten teacher aged 76.

The service struck a bad patch in the mid-70s due to a number of internal problems,

including instances of drug

abuse, but has since made a strong comeback to a new

popularity high.

Until recently Tongans had little difficulty in obtaining US visas and work permits through Pago Pago in American Samoa, but immigration pro cedures have been consider ably tightened and applications must now be processed and ap proved by the regional immi gration office in Fiji.

Repatriated earnings from Tongans in the States (most communities are on the west coast) are an important and greatly valued source of over seas funds for Tonga.

The Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific (a private voluntary New York based organisation) has about US$25O 000 in US aid money to administer and distribute from its Nukualofa office over three years.

Current disbursements cover fisheries development, the Fualu Farm Training Pro gramme, assistance to the spec

tacularly successful and widely

diversified Catholic Diocese’s

village development pro

gramme, and to other village

self-help projects organised by

independent women’s groups.

Between SUS4S 000-$5 O 000 a year comes from the Fiji based US small projects fund which has recently financed a

community building in

Kolovai village, three water catchment systems in Haapai, and a warehouse and drying sheds for the fast-growing vanilla industry in Vavau, plus various mini-projects such as

garden fencing.

While PC volunteers tend to

be associated with these pro jects, if only to assist with the essential paperwork, their in volvement is not mandatory.

The grassroots emphasis in both categories of funded pro jects, and the emphasis on vil

lage deployment of volunteers,

gives the US programme a more personalised people-to

people impact than many

much more financially im pressive bilateral aid pro grammes.

Bilateral links were strengthened late in 1979 with the formation of a Tongan-

American Friendship Society

to bring together all Tongans with some American sap in their family trees. The society holds regular meetings and re cently staged a feast to honour the new American ambassador, John Condon, during one of his regular visits from Fiji. Mr Condon’s relaxed informality and his obviously genuine and enthusiastic interest in the kingdom and its people is con tributing another quota of cement to the Tonga-America

relationship.

The PC director here, Pres ton McCrossen, sums up the aims of Americans in Tonga as

‘helping the less privileged

among the Tongan people to identify and achieve their basic human needs’. He says ‘some

counterparting’ is taking place

at both structured and informal levels to enable Tongans in time to take over from their opposite numbers in the PC.

He feels the PC system is mutually valuable ‘because it

enables each side to absorb and learn from the other side’s cul ture’.

Tonga’s director of edu cation, N’a’a Fiefia, underlined a similar point during a recent pass-out ceremony for the latest PC intake. He said ‘by living and working so close to our people Peace Corps volun teers have increased Tongans’ confidence in their ability to

help themselves’.